Hydration-Water Preparedness

By Kellene, Preparedness Pro on 10 February 2010 - 12:57pm

by Kellene

Hydration is more important than you realize

When I mention waterto folks as being a part of preparedness, I usually get a response that reveals they are thinking solely of storing water for the purposes of drinking, cooking, and sanitation. But what many people do not realize is vital role that consuming water today plays into your Water Preparedness.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that the various areas of preparedness play into one another. They are quite symbiotic in nature. I find that the Water Preparedness area plays into more of the other areas consistently though. Proper water preparedness now improves your physical, mental, medical, and food areas of preparedness. Rather than harping some more on just how much you need for the future, today I thought I’d bring the area of Water Preparedness more to the forefront of your everyday actions.

In an effort to try to get you all to see more of WHY water is so important, I’m going to focus primarily on how water works with your body. Some of this information you may have heard in passing, but I intend to give you more information on how water is vital to your body. Perhaps if you understand that aspect better, you’ll be more inclined to place the consumption of water in its proper perspective daily.

Your body is mostly made up of water

Yes, our bodies are made up of 90% water.

Your blood is made up of 90% water. Every live cell in your body is actually 75% water. The brain is made up of 85 percent water and is extremely sensitive to any dehydration. If you don’t feed the body sufficient water, then you don’t get energized cells and the cell duplication in your body is slowed down dramatically. Water in the cells is also critical for cleansing and extracting the toxic waste AND metabolism. Yup, if you’re body’s fat thermostat is off, it has a LOT to do with your water intake.

Water isn’t just good for your body, it’s good for your energy. In fact, water is the FIRST source of energy your body looks to use. If it can’t find energy then it goes after glucose, which leads to diabetic problems.

Water is the FIRST nutrient your body demands. Unfortunately though, as we get older, the body’s signal for water gets muddled and is misinterpreted as a craving for food. So if you are craving food, salt, sugar, or something else—guess what? Your body needs water. Here’s another snag. If your body is to the point where it’s having to yell out for water, it’s already dehydrated by at least two quarts of water! Being proactive in our water intake is quite critical. Every adult body gets rid of at least 2 quarts of water daily through urination, breathing, and perspiration. If you are a larger body set and out of shape, then you actual get rid of even more than that. So, what are you doing to replace the two quarts that your body uses daily? Well, if you’re like most adults, you do very little, and at the very least, not enough.

Staying hydrated helps your brain and body to function correctly

The chemical formula for water is H2O.

Your body needs H2O-plain and simple. If you attempt to give your body water that has something else in it, it is no longer H2O, right? The formula is altered. It’s now H2O plus whatever the chemical sign is for sugar, or lemon, or milk, etc. The body can’t use it as water at that point. It uses it as food which the body has to work at distracting the water. Your brain needs easy, ready-to-use plain and simple WATER. Your brain gets priority on water access. The reason being is that if the brain cells do not stay hydrated, then they die. Brain cells do not get recreated or resupplied. They die and that’s it. No new ones will take their place. This is why alcohol is said to kill brain cells. Alcohol actually dehydrates the brain cells. When a person suffers from a hangover, they are actually experiencing severe dehydration. The cure for which is a massive amount of hydration, not some other concoction. Bottom line, juices, sodas, milk, flavored waters and coffee do NOT substitute the water need your body has as they do not hydrate the body. Instead they make the body work harder and in some instances (like caffeine and alcohol) they dehydrate your body’s cells. Water actually provides the brain with an enduring high and lots of energy for it to perform. The opposite affect of hydration is the shutting down of bodily functions and the pathology damage. Persistent dehydration creates a continuous state of chemical change in our body.

How would your car respond if you gave it the same quarts of oil to do it’s job with over and over and over again? At some point it would break down right because the filter would get clogged and nothing would be able to pass through. Well, our bodies are very much like that as well. If we do not feed them fresh water with which to work, they we are compromising the strength of the filter—our livers and kidneys. While persons can “survive” a lack of water for more than 3 days, if the liver becomes dehydrated without any solution for longer than 72 hours, then permanent physical damage will result. Did you notice the word PERMANENT in there? Sure you’ve got folks who have been rescued from the debris of the earthquake in Haiti a week later without water. And yes, they are alive, but I guarantee you that there has been some permanent physical damage done to their body.

Dehydration can lead to permanent damage to your body

A person cannot successfully fight an infection or other illness in their body without sufficient hydration. The “standard” time frame for fighting the flu or cold can be drastically reduced if a person were to focus on proper hydration of the cells. Taking vitamin C and all of the other rigmarole is useless without the water to transport the nutrients from one part of the body or the other. Your body operates on a waterway system folks, not freeway. Food without water has absolutely NO energy or nutritional value for the body. You simply cannot absorb nutrients or energy into your body without it.

Think of water as your life source

Not only is there a significant case for the regular consumption of water being made here, but there are experts who tells us WHEN to consume water ideally as well. Two glasses of water first thing in the morning will help to hydrate and get your cells energized. When you’re pulling an “all nighter” instead of going for the cola drink or the coffee, go for pure, clean water. Having a glass of water 30 minutes before a meal will enable you to get the most nutrients out of your food, and cause you to eat less. Whether you do it or not, the body triggers hunger as a need for nutrients. If your body actually gets to absorb nutrients, the hunger passes. But if you feed it food without any method of absorbing the nutrients, then you’re still hungry. Also, having water about 2 ½ hours after a meal will help you to rehydrate your body to replace the energy it had to use to digest your meal, and it will also help with proper digestion of the food.

Ah, water. I just love what it does for me. And the more I learn, the more it makes so much sense. I hope that you’ve learned just a little bit from this which may better motivate you to take care of your hydration needs today as well as being more mindful of just how critical drinking water will be to your body’s needs in the future as well. You can store up “health” in your body now through proper hydration as well as in the future with water reserves throughout your home.

Comments

Submitted by Cin on 11 February 2010 - 5:49am

Great job on this info. Too many don't realize the consequences of not taking in extra water. If we ran our vehicles like we run our bodies they would all be sitting on the roadside with seized up engines. You have made excellent points on the value of water consumption and its primary necessity in survival. A good example is the Haiti earthquake where survivors were being pulled out alive long after hope had been tossed. Its a good bet those individuals were well hydrated just before the quake. It would be interesting to have some stats on survival victims that went beyond the normal survival period of 3 to 5 days without water.

Great article. Water is needed in to keep you cool, but it's also needed to keep you warm. I noticed a lot of soldiers didn't drink as much water when the weather was cold. They got cold and a headache. I'd have them go and warm up and drink around a quart of water. They'd warm up and the headache would go away.
I've always been a big on fluid intake but, I became a big fan of water in the military.
A good way to tell if you are getting enough water is your urine color. It should be a very light yellow with just a hint of color. If it isn't "Drink more Water".
The first place to store water is in youir body.